Jury in on dancing Nancy: A dis-Grace

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The news is almost enough to make you jam pruning shears into your eyeball:

National courtroom gossip Nancy Grace will have her name in lights on “Dancing With the Stars.”

“It could be worse,” said one guy at work. “You could be watching Nancy Grace on ‘The Bachelorette.’â€‰”

Perhaps.

In her professional life, Grace is always on the lookout for some sensational criminal trial. When she finds one, she circles down out of the sky and National-Geographically hops over to the accused.

Then she proceeds to strip every bit of flesh from the bones of said accused.

But now she’ll be circling the dance floor, in one of those sexy ballroom dancing skirts slit up to here, in the arms of some sweaty dance partner named Mario or Fabio or whomever, and I just hope somebody tapes it and tells me about it later.

Because I’m too afraid to watch.

Yes, it’s the fear factor. Not of Grace in particular, who in private may indeed be warm and kind, the sort of person who’d lovingly strip all the flesh from your bones.

What scares me is reality TV in general. I just can’t take the creepiness.

A few years ago, the former first lady of the state of Illinois appeared on one such program. It was a “survival”-type show set in the jungle. Would-be celebrities like Lou Diamond Phillips dealt with the elements.

She ate bugs for money, cried and, even worse, had a mawkish heartfelt discussion with other almost-celebrities, including former NBA player John Salley, and everyone oozed sincerity.

So I vowed never to watch another one again. I’ve missed the steamy Mediterranean catfights of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.” I’ve missed the evil “Children of the Corn” on that super-nanny show and the wife-swap show in which men trade in reasonably cool wives for illiterate she-devils.

One constant? They’re all the modern equivalent of the carnival geek show, and afterward, viewers feel better because their lives aren’t as terrible as the lives on TV.

Their husband hasn’t made a fool out of himself (on TV, at least). Their 4-year-old hasn’t burned down the house (yet). Their sister hasn’t put on the big hair and the big heels and the other big things and then accused another sister of “stealing her man.”

It’s so depressing, tawdry and cheap that I’d much rather watch something clean and uplifting, like national politics. There’s nothing remotely unreal about that.